After this, will anyone want to join the US foreign service? Where govt does not protect you?

[bobbieinok]

[ffr]

1. I thought this when the media called the election for Putin's Puppet

If I was in the CIA, undercover anywhere or in any position having to do with Russia, I'd have resigned immediately and taken retirement. Get me outta here before my life is put in direct danger.

rePuticans are Russians that say they are Americans. No denying it.

[crickets]

2. The attrition rate in the State Dept. is deliberate.

Trump Is Waging War on America’s Diplomats

...This incident, which has not been previously reported, offers a stark example of the politicization of the foreign service under Trump. It’s also a grim illustration of how the administration—through three years of attempted budget cuts, hiring freezes, and grotesquely personal attacks—has eviscerated the country's diplomatic corps and put highly sensitive matters of national security in the hands of politically appointed novices. They are people like Gordon Sondland, the Trump donor who became America's ambassador to the European Union, who is now playing a starring role in the Ukrainian imbroglio that imperils the Trump presidency. It is no accident that impeachment hangs on a matter of diplomacy—and a stand-off between the country's top foreign policy professionals and the president's political allies, national security amateurs installed to do Trump’s bidding rather than the country’s. [snip]

What’s more, the attrition continues unabated. Career foreign service officers work long hours in difficult conditions, making less money than they would in the private sector. Often, they are driven by their sense of mission—say, promoting American values abroad—but when President Trump began attacking the pillars of American national security and smearing diplomats by name on Twitter, “suddenly,” says one senior foreign service officer who was pushed out on a scheduling technicality, “the equation didn’t make sense anymore.” What had started as a trickle of people leaving at the highest levels—often, people who were close to retirement—has turned into a flood of mid-career and junior officers heading for the door. The departure of top talent, people who had decades’ worth of wisdom that could have passed on to people below them, as well as the exodus of mid-level officers who had years to go before their retirements, will continue to resonate for quite a while, says Nicholas Burns, a retired career foreign service officer who is now at the Harvard Kennedy School. “That gap will show up years later,” he told me.

It's not a case of political blunder. The attack on our national security is deliberate, is taking place at all levels of government, and is intended to have long term consequences.